Explicit Intent is Identity

There is a trick theory to improve the pursuit of well-being that strikes us, at Placement Loop, as especially agitating.  It is the theory of identity in the context of data.  Let’s call it the data-first theory.  Currently, the web is being used by companies to control the identity relationship with customers.  In essence, they’re using the web to capture data, infer an identity of people and their intent, and leverage that.  The inference, of course, is based on a falsehood. Let me explain.

In real life, identity has depth, it is not flat.  We start as strangers in a crowd, a location in space and time, and gradually we expose parts of our identity depending on the crowd and the objects we are interacting with.  So, different crowds, locations, and surrounding objects are different worlds.  And the easier it is to broadcast a persona at different times is the freedom we want on the web, just like we want in our physical lives.

However, when inferred identity is the starting point to enable interactions, as currently happens on the web, the results are irritating to say the least.  Basically, who we are and how we wish to be known to others in context gets no respect on today’s web.  This is to say that, as individuals, we bring more to markets than fits into the scope of any company’s systems, which accept only a small range of signals from us.

So, an intent-first theory is better and possible with supplier relationship management (SRM), the conceptual reciprocal of customer relationship management (CRM) that companies employ to infer a persona and our intent.  SRM is about tools for individuals to create more value in their relationships with suppliers whereas CRM is software to help suppliers extract more profit from each customer.  SRM comes from consumer preferences to have full agency of themselves and/or to employ agents to whom they have granted full or partial agency.

Explicit intent (not big data) should reveal desire to construct potential.  That is, not to become more and more what one is, but to become everything that someone is capable of becoming.  This is the essence of improving the pursuit of a person’s well-being because there is an extreme distance between data and wisdom, i.e. knowing the right thing to do.  In this sense, identity is more than inferred, it is explicit intent.